Casio Prizm: Why TI Calc Coders Should Abandon the Nspire CX

KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:11:30 pm Post subject:

And indeed, even though we haven't figured out the checksum polynomial yet, it's trivial to fake it by padding out the program contents to match a known checksum. As I said FTA, the Nspire via TI officially disallows any kind of development, and TI has made their position towards third-party programming very, very clear.
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Qwerty.55 · Expert Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 613

JosJuice · Power User Joined: 17 Oct 2010 Posts: 306 Location: Sweden

What's really great about the Prizm's way of running assembly programs is that the user doesn't notice that we're doing fancy stuff behind the scenes to avoid the checksums - the user just has to send the add-in to the calc like a normal Casio add-in.

Qwerty.55 · Expert Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 613

I wouldn't call it "fancy," per se... Razz

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KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:17:18 pm Post subject:

Definitely agreed at JosJuice. If a user can just transfer a file over from another calculator (or just plug in their Prizm as a flash drive and load on a file) and everything just works, many, many more will be willing to do so rather than to go through the process of applying Ndless. In addition, I'd imagine many users would choose not to apply Ndless for fear of warranties and other scary things.
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calc84maniac · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:23:45 pm Post subject:

KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:29:44 pm Post subject:

But again, those are all specific features of the Nspire hardware. I am sure if Casio had the same development budget as Texas Instruments, they could implement the same variety of features. I'm more worried about the fact that TI doesn't want you to use the touchpad in software, hack their calculators, and indeed that Ndless has to exist in the first place. And I still haven't heard your story of how you got into programming.
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calc84maniac · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:31:15 pm Post subject:

I got into programming by making math programs on my TI-84+SE (which I'm pretty sure the TI-Nspire is quite capable of at this point)
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KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:34:02 pm Post subject:

qazz42 · Vampire Killer Joined: 07 Apr 2010 Posts: 4179

calc84maniac · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:38:24 pm Post subject:

KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:38:35 pm Post subject:

Qazz, agreed. Smile

Anywho, Qazz suggested I post some form of this essay/letter on the TINspire Google group; what do you guys think?
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Qwerty.55 · Expert Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 613

The math functions of the Prizm are almost identical to those of the TI-84+ series.

Also, Kerm, could you post a link of the Google group discussion back here?
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merthsoft · File Archiver Joined: 09 May 2010 Posts: 2735

KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 03:09:06 pm Post subject:

That's fair enough, Merth, I can live with that statement of the problem. I'd even take it one farther and say that when they fail to do so, they let down their target demographic. Qwerty, it's http://groups.google.com/group/tinspire .
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souvik1997 · Guru-in-Training Joined: 19 Apr 2010 Posts: 2870

Some discussion from #prizm on EFnet: http://pastebin.com/BNrXPBYn
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KermMartian · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 04:20:28 pm Post subject:

shkaboinka · Posted: 06 Mar 2011 04:31:23 pm Post subject:

I've always been a huge fan of TI, and I can attest to how important of an influence a graphing calculator makes in seeding interest. To quote myself directly from a conversation I had yesterday (before I knew anything about this post): "But hey, it's all about the TI's. I swear, there is a correlation between people who come from both computer and TI programming experience that brings out some of the best". But I've noticed this pattern of decline over the years, and it really is disappointing. I cannot even visit their site (education.ti.com) now without getting upset because of how their target audience has become consistently more naive! Developer information has all but vanished, documentation had been flat-out REMOVED, and their technical specifications are embarrassingly not technical -- it's like they don't expect anyone visiting their site or reading their manuals to have any technical intelligence or interest! I could go on about how embarrassingly empty their manuals have become (you do not design a programming language or a device with a zillion functions and NOT document it!), and how they publish application features in place of actual specs (no mention of processor type or speed -- seriously, where do they expect one to find that information is NOT on their website?). You'd think over the years that they'd add better technology for the same price, or at least lower the price of the TI-83+ (old technology) after roughly a decade.

I realize that it's not TI so much that I support, it's the T.I. community -- sad that T.I. basically shuts itself out from that! C'mon T.I., at least PRETEND to support what is MOST of your fan-base!